Birds-of-a-Feather Session

Thursday
6:10 PM -
7:00 PM
(room: As Assigned)

Active eTextbooks for CS: What Should They Be?

room: 201

Cliff
Shaffer,
Virginia Tech

What should the textbook of tomorrow look like in a world of ubiquitous access to computing? Hypertextbooks have proved difficult to create and been fundamentally passive experiences. Commercial eBooks are merely books printed on an electronic screen instead of paper. New technologies such as HTML5 make it feasible to develop interactive applications that integrate with web services to provide a rich, pedagogically effective learning environment compatible with a range of computing platforms. We seek to generate discussion by participants to describe what they hope to see in online textbooks in the near future, and what resources and support would be required for them to adopt such a thing into their own courses.

Enriching Computing Instruction with Studio-Based Learning

room: 205

N. Hari
Narayanan,
Auburn University
Martha
Crosby,
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Dean
Hendrix,
Auburn University
Christopher
Hundhausen,
Washington State University

This BOF is related to the Special Session Transforming the CS Classroom with Studio-Based Learning (SBL). SBL promotes learning in a collaborative context by having students construct, present, review and refine their work with the guidance of peers and teachers. A team of CS educators and education experts have been implementing and evaluating SBL in CS courses over the past five years. The BOF will introduce SBL to the SIGCSE audience, and engage them in a discussion of the potential of, evidence for, and practical advice regarding SBL as an instructional approach that can motivate as well as teach students. Discussions will include "war stories" from teachers who have adopted the approach in their courses and hands-on activities to help participants apply SBL to their courses.

AP CS A - Sharing teaching strategies and curricular ideas

room: 206

Lester
Wainwright,
Charlottesville High School
Renee
Ciezki,
Estrella Mountain Community College
Robert Glen
Martin,
TAG Magnet High School

This BOF will provide an opportunity for high school and college faculty to discuss the AP CS A curriculum and to explore possibilities for collaborations and outreach activities between high schools and colleges.

Regional celebrations are locally organized, professional conferences modeled after the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (GHC). This BOF allows people who have organized or would like to organize such a conference to get together to share successes and challenges. Attendees that have hosted a regional celebration are invited to bring a un-poster (i.e. 8.5 x 11 flyer, 30 copies) that highlights their conference features and/or shares lessons learned. The leaders plan to divide the time between the 5 major areas of conference planning: program, sponsorship, publicity/communications, registration, and site/logistics.

Hacking and the Security Curriculum

room: 302A

Richard
Weiss,
The Evergreen State College
Michael
Locasto,
University of Calgary
Jens
Mache,
Lewis & Clark College

Incorporating information security into the undergraduate curriculum continues to be a topic of interest to SIGCSE attendees. The purpose of this BOF is to help sustain the existing community of educators and researchers interested in bringing ethical hacking skills and an understanding of security into the classroom and relating these topics to the foundations of Computer Science. We would like to bring our colleagues together to share pedagogical practices, stories of hacking and how to use them to inspire our students and communicate complex concepts in computer science and security. We also plan to discuss our own experiences, practices and ongoing efforts (e.g., our infosec teaching experiences, the SISMAT program, EDURange and the dissemination of infosec interactive exercises).

Flipping the Classroom

room: 302B

Barry
Brown,
Sierra College

In a flipped classroom, students watch or listen to the lecture at home and do homework in the classroom. The classroom becomes much more interactive and the educator has ample opportunity to provide individualized guidance when it's most needed. The watch-at-home content can include recorded lectures, demonstration videos, adaptive quizzes, or anything in between. Come share your experiences developing "flip" material, learn from others what's involved, and find out whether it's working to improve success and retention.

Using Social Networks to Engage Computer Science Students

room: 302C

Semmy
Purewal,
University of North Carolina at Asheville
Owen
Astrachan,
Duke University
David
Brown,
Pellissippi State Community College
Jeffrey
Forbes,
Duke University

Social Networking continues to be a popular past-time among high school and college students. In this birds of a feather session, we will share ideas on integrating social networking topics into computer science courses at the introductory and non-major levels. Additionally we will discuss approaches to integrating social network programming into upper level courses. Finally we will attempt to address the following questions: will social networking draw new students into the computing disciplines the way that video games did in the previous generation? Will it attract new types of students with different expectations? Is social networking just a fad that will have no effect on Computer Science programs? Or is social networking a topic that is better left to other academic disciplines?

Digital Humanities: Reaching Out to the Other Culture

room: 305A

Robert
Beck,
Villanova University

This discussion will connect instructors who are reaching out to their colleagues in the humanities to discover areas of collaboration. It focuses on what these disciplines have to contribute to our knowledge of computing and how computational thinking informs these disciplines. One goal is to lay the foundation for a more general program of study in digital humanities that would reach students who would like to see how computing could enhance their work in history, literature, anthropology, or philosophy, for example.

A Multimedia and Liberal Arts Approach to a First Course in Programming and its Crossover Potential for Computer Science and the Arts

room: 305B

Trish
Cornez,
University of Redlands
Richard
Cornez,
University of Redlands

Students are acculturated in a visual, interactive, and interdisciplinary world.
This BOF will provide a platform for a discussion on how multimedia can be integrated in a CS1 course.Discussions will focus on attributes of conventional and unconventional first languages and explore a liberal arts approach to integrate disciplines both scientific and artistic. We envision discussions relevant to:
•Mathematicians visualizing processes using multimedia and algorithms.
•Physicists using game programming to deconstruct and explore physical environments and re-assembling them as virtual worlds.
•Computer scientists and behavioral scientists collaborating on responsive systems to explore philosophical underpinnings of media.
•Musicians and computer scientists creating computational art.

App Inventor for Android is a visual blocks language for building mobile apps. Like Scratch, the language’s drag-and-drop blocks interface significantly lowers the barrier to entry. Beginners can immediately build apps that interface with mobile technology (e.g., GPS, Text-to-speech, SMS Texting) and build apps that have a real-world impact. In this BoF, hosted by App Inventor creator Hal Abelson and experienced teachers and authors, we’ll discuss the language, its future in K-12 and university education, and its new home at the MIT Center for Mobile Learning.

The pace of technology for use in computing education is staggering. In the last five years, the following tools / websites have completely transformed our teaching: Piazza, Google Docs, YouTube, Doodle and whenisgood.net, Skype and Google Hangout, and Khan Academy among others. Hardware has also played a part – we love our Zoom H2 digital voice recorder (for recording CD-quality lecture audio), Blue Yeti USB mike (for audio/videoconferences), and iClickers (for engaging students in class).
Do you wish you could easily share your favorites? Want to find out what the others know that you don’t? Have a tool you’ve built and want to get some users? Come to this BOF! We’ll also show the TECH website we’ve built that attempts to collect all of these tools in one place.

The use of Android in computing courses is growing. Students find it engaging because they can develop Java apps for mobile devices. Android also offers challenges in the classroom, especially in CS1 and CS2. As a professional- level platform, it uses design idioms that may require students to learn advanced language features earlier. It also adds logistical complications to setting up projects and development tools. Existing approaches to software testing and automated grading need adaptation. This BOF is for sharing assignments, resources, techniques, and experiences with others, focusing on issues that arise when balancing the teaching of fundamental concepts with the complexities required to accomplish basic tasks on the Android platform.

Interdisciplinary Database Collaborations

room: 307

Suzanne
Dietrich,
Arizona State University
Don
Goelman,
Villanova University

Databases play a major role across many disciplines for the storage and retrieval of information. Many database educators are establishing collaborations with colleagues representing a diverse spectrum of interests, for both research and pedagogical purposes. Further, the range of cooperating disciplines is expanding, as evidenced by the emergence of new fields such as computational journalism, as well as by the proliferation of discipline-specific dialects of XML. The goal of this Birds-of-a-Feather session is to bring database educators together to share their experiences on interdisciplinary collaborations in an open dialogue that is fostered by this format.

Google Summer of Code and Google Code-in BoF

room: Marriott University A

Carol
Smith,
Google, Inc.

Google Summer of Code is the outreach program aimed at getting university students involved in a 3-month online internship working in open source software development.
Google Code-in is the contest aimed at involving 13-18 year olds in open source software development, documentation translation, outreach, research, and more. I will be discussing both programs at this BoF and encouraging students and teachers to get involved.
We'll open the forum for discussion amongst the attendees about how to participate, how to get the word out, and answer any questions they may have.

Over the last five years, CSTA has built a solid outreach and teacher support network through the work of its chapters and Leadership Cohort. This network has also become a major source of active partnerships between K-12 teachers, their schools, and colleagues from colleges, universities, and industry. The goal of this BOF is to provide concrete examples and suggestions for SIGCSE members interested in building these kinds of partnerships.

As the popularity of mobile devices surges, more and more organizations are looking to exploit the novel interaction methods of mobile devices to re-deploy legacy software or to develop innovative new applications. Many organizations are looking to nearby universities for expertise in this area. At the same time, mobile computing has become increasingly integrated within courses in CS departments. Historically, capstone courses and other advanced electives have resulted in the production of non-trivial software artifacts. This BOF will provide a platform for discussion of how the use of mobile app platforms in such courses can allow for the development of meaningful software projects that engage with and give back to the community and provide rich opportunities for service learning.

Have Class, Will Travel

room: Marriott Chancellor

Paige
Meeker,
Presbyterian College

At many schools, various disciplines offer travel courses (to other lands or to locations within the USA) to give students an experiential component to their learning. How can we introduce such courses to computer science departments? This BOF will provide a time of sharing ideas for such courses and welcomes discussion of travel courses that have been successfully taught. In addition to normal course preparation, these courses also involve travel arrangements, payment schedules, and careful scheduling to provide maximum benefit to the student. Our group will share ideas for locations of travel, topics of courses, and collaboration with other disciplines, as well as the additional overhead such a course entails, such as cost/payment schedule, insurance, itinerary, safety, etc.

Integration of Experiential learning and teaching: -Beyond the walls of the classroom, techniques, challenges and merits.

room: Marriott Alumni

Arshia
Khan,
The College of St. Scholastica
Tamara
Lichtenberg,
Center for Healthcare Innovation- The College of St. Scholastica
John
Woosley,
Southeastern Louisiana University
Rishika
Dhody,
The College of St. Scholastica
Joel
Pouale,
The College of St. Scholastica

Integration of experiential learning is critical in the field of computer science. With technology evolving over night, job requirements are extremely volatile. Educators have a challenging task of staying abreast with the technology and market needs while self learning the new technologies. One solution is to rely on the businesses for input on what should be taught and using them to extend the learning into the real world through experiential learning(not just internships). Talking points:
•Filling gaps between academia and industry
•Faculty can share their methods of experiential learning.
•Applying the practical skills to theoretical knowledge- turning theory into practice
•Opportunities to bring real world clients in the classroom